hitchens, boteach, public-debatesI just watched this debate, from 2008, between Hitchens vs.Boteach. In this debate, Boteach comes off like a Jewish Bill O’Reilly; but, they both agree on this non-trivial bet (originally proposed by Boteach) whereby the loser had to buy 100 books from the winner and distribute them to the loser’s colleges. The bet was over some ruling in an Isreal rabbinical court: I’m not sure of the background of the referenced case – feel free to clear it up.
At 1:03 Boteach reads a statement from Hitchen’s book:
“Speaking about Baruch Goldstein, Christopher Hitchens writes while serving as a physician in the Israeli Army he had announced that he would not treat non-Jewish patients such as Isreali Arabs on the sabbath as it happens he was obeying Rabbinic law and declining not to do this, as many Israeli courts had confirmed.” - Boteach
Going on, he says
“I challenge Mr. Hitchens to name a single Jewish court in the entire world that would ever rule that a non-Jew should not be treated on the Sabbath. In fact, if he names it I will buy a 100 copies of his book and I will give it to […] my religious friends; but, if he fails I challenge him to buy 100 copies of my book.” - Boteach
At about 1:06 Boteach makes a statement to counter one of Hitchens’s statements that I presume comes from his book:
“That it is a slander to say, against Jews, that any Jewish court would say that non Jews should not be treated, and the state of Israel treats every single Arab and Palestinian even when terrorists are brought to hospitals.” - Boteach
The exchange gets quite directed at around 1:10, and the civility degrades until the conclusion of the pissing contest. At around 1:14 we find Boteach summarizing the bet:
“I just wanna repeat that we heard tonight that a high rabbinical court said you could not save a non-Jewish life on the sabbath, that is absolutely false.” - Boteach
Hitchen’s apparently affirming he accepts this chants in the background “100 books riding on this.” You again hear both of them chanting in agreement “100 books” in the last 5 seconds of the debate.
Now, it seems Wikipedia indicates Hitchens won. Did he? Did Boteach buy those 100 books and distribute them to Jewish colleagues?
Anyone have a line to Hitchens? Did he ever hold Boteach to his gambit?
This is a repost of my post to /r/atheism, which was never answered
According to Boteach, Hitchens conceded the bet to Boteach but he did not buy 100 copies of Boteach's book.
From Boteach's website, via archives.org, because Boteach seems to have deleted the article:
ON A related subject, many people have written to me to inquire who won the bet between me and Christopher Hitchens in the most memorable exchange of our second debate, last January, when I challenged him to cite a source for his contention, on page 208 of his book, G-d Is Not Great, that "many Israeli religious courts have confirmed" that a Jew may not "treat non-Jewish patients, such as Israeli Arabs, especially on the Sabbath." I told Hitchens that this was a gross defamation of Judaism and if he could cite a single Jewish court as a source, I would buy 100 copies of his book. If he could not, he would have to buy 100 copies of my new book, The Broken American Male. A few days later Hitchens sent an email to the 92nd St. Y, who hosted the debate, citing Israeli writer Dr. Israel Shahak's book, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, as his source, and asking that his email be circulated to the debate's vast audience.
I quickly wrote back that Shahak's 1965 claim to have witnessed an Orthodox man refusing to allow his telephone to be used to call an ambulance for a non-Jew because it would violate Shabbat, and to have had a "rabbinical court in Jerusalem" confirm that the man had acted properly, was exposed as a fraud a year later by Lord Immanuel Jakobovitz, later to become the universally venerated Chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth. Jakobovitz wrote in Tradition in 1966: "Dr. Shahak, challenged to substantiate his personal 'testimony' was eventually forced to admit that the Orthodox Jew he had 'witnessed' refusing the use of his telephone simply did not exist. The whole incident had been fabricated in true Protocols style. Equally overlooked was the circumstance that the Rabbinate, far from having confirmed Dr. Shahak's allegation, had in fact ruled that the Sabbath must be violated to save non-Jewish no less than Jewish lives."
I asked Hitchens to now go back to the well and find a non-fraudulent source. And since his book cited "many" Jewish courts that had so ruled, surely it would be easy. I told him that I was happy to forgo the buying of 100 copies of my book in exchange for a simple correction of the defamatory error. To his great credit, Hitchens wrote back that it was "very good of you to put it like that: I will certainly undertake to correct anything in my book that doesn't survive a challenge.... Shahak was a friend of mine and it's his honor that is posthumously at stake, not mine (or OK, as well as mine)."
After the exchange of several more emails, Hitchens wrote with a link to a column that in turn cited the controversial New York Times piece of July, 22, 2007, by my close friend Prof. Noah Feldman of Harvard, in which a Jewish teacher in his day school mentioned the existence of religious sources that would distinguish between a Jewish and non-Jewish life on the Sabbath. The column, however, conceded that these are minority opinions which are not authoritative and which have been overruled throughout Jewish history by Jewish courts who have never wavered from the ruling that Jews must save non-Jewish lives on all occasions and on the Sabbath. Based on this, and being unable to find a single court to back up his serious libel against Judaism, Hitchens wrote, "I would consider changing religious courts to fundamentalist rabbinical authorities." And that's where it now stands, with Hitchens agreeing to do the honorable thing and amend the slur in his book, which I trust he will implement.
Hitchins lost that one, it was a hoax.
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